Thursday, March 15, 2012

As crafters/artists many of us have that “oh, I can do that” mentality. That’s exactly what was going through my mind when I decided that I wanted to add musical shapes to my iPod sleeves. So I went to the craft store, bought different color felt and went home to start the process. After a couple of hours of searching the internet for just the right shapes, I gave up! I posted a plea on my Facebook page, hoping someone would save me from myself.

While I love crafting, sometimes I need to know my limitations. I have all these great ideas floating around in my head but obviously not enough time to crank them all out. With my felt musical shapes, sure I could have did them myself, but it would have taken me forever and that’s after I found some shapes I liked!

So Linda from Etched InTime came to my rescue. Not only did she send me mock ups, she was kind enough to tweak them just a little bit to fit my needs. After a couple of days of communications, she had 100 of them done and in the mail to me in a matter of a day. One day! Yep sometimes you just need to leave things to the professionals.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

My names Armada (or at least that's what I keep on telling people). I worked in many mediums and love experimenting with reusing/recycling. Most of the work I do now is drawing and painting, but every now and again I try to make my life more fun by finding new things to make. I've done pottery (it's actually my greatest passion, though I don't have potters wheel, so, so much for that), stain glass, paper mache, drawing and painting in almost every media out there, shoe-making, and much, much more. Here now, I'll show you how to make a boring frame look very unique and colorful. Frames decorated this way work really well for modern art, especially abstract and surrealism.

You will need:

Flat frame (no ornate carvings or or anything like that, those I usually paint instead). The one I fave here was bought from a dollar store, so it's very simple.

Old unwanted magazine, or anything else that has similar size and quality pages.

Brush

Mod Podge (glossy) or any other similar product.

Steps:

Fold and cut paper into strips. Size of strips will depend on the frame, I needed ¾ inch strips for mine (1/16 of a page)

Roll strips into tight rolls and make a ton of them. I usually cut strips and roll them while watching TV because it takes a a lot of time.

Apply thick layer of Mod Podge to the frame. I usually do it one side at a time to leave less time for the glue to dry.

Place rolls of paper on the frame next to one another.

After the glue is dry, apply a thin layer of Mod Podge to the all exposed sides of rolls and frame.

Once it's all dry, you can start using it. Mod Podge will give a glossy finish and will protect it if you will need to wipe it with moist cloth, it also acts as glue keeping everything together.